1. Field of the Invention
The present invention describes a process for simultaneous verification of the authenticity of any kind of information media and information it contains.
2. Description of the Related Technology
U.S. Pat. No. 4,423,4l5 teaches a process for authenticating an object which includes measuring certain specific physical characteristics of an object in a predetermined zone and coding these characteristics on the object in order to check the code and verify the objects authenticity. This process is accomplished by a special device adapted to measure the appropriate physical characteristics in the predetermined zone, encode this data according to the same algorithm, and compare this data with the data recorded on the object. The characteristics to be measured are characteristics that together are never identical on all points. This patent is particularly useful when the object to be verified is a paper document. The specifics of each paper document are inherent in the composition of the paper itself, particularly the transparency and reflectivity of the paper.
This process effectively permits one to verify that a certain paper document is authentic and no one has tampered with the document within the predetermined zone from which the physical characteristics were recorded since they were recorded.
Still, this process has a serious handicap because it cannot guarantee, when used on paper documents for example, that the information recorded on the paper has not been tampered with after the initial recordation of data.
U.S. Pat. Nos. FR-A-2,370,328 and wO-A-8l00776, contrary to U.S. A-4,423,415 teach processes for controlling document authenticity for information that was added after the data was sampled and the document was placed in service. This involves sampling a part of the information in view on the document during a check and comparing this data, saved in memory or encoded on the document itself with the same information from each previous samplings similarly saved or encoded.
Patents FR-A-2,370,328 and WO-A-8100776 are not really an improvement of U.S. Pat. No. 4,423,4l5 because they not take into account any characteristics of the supporting media for the information. Thus the information could be falsified or substituted later.